Digital development and its renewed applications have contributed to influencing our business and projects in all aspects, especially with the presence of social media platforms where interaction through the comments feature has produced what is known today as “Social Listening”; to be an important tool for understanding our customers and continuously improving our projects. So if you are one of those who are keen to read comments after announcing any product to learn about customer expectations, this article will explain to you how social listening works and the most prominent strategies and tools that you can follow to achieve remarkable success in serving your customers.
What is the difference between social media listening and monitoring?
Social media monitoring tools focus specifically on a company, campaign, brand, or product by tracking various metrics, including the industry your company operates in, engagement rates, brand mentions, relevant hashtags, the number of comments your brand receives, and how it compares to competitors.
However, social listening takes a broader approach, analyzing not only the brand but also industries, product categories, and audiences. It goes further by assessing customer sentiment, their actual experience with your brand, and their expectations or suggestions.
Simply put, monitoring tells you what's happening, while social listening tells you why it's happening?
6 Steps to Building an Effective Social Listening Strategy:
Set specific business goals for social listening and KPIs:
Examples of business goals:
Learn about competitors and prominent industry trends to help differentiate your brand.
Provide engaging content that is relevant to your audience and relevant to your brand.
Explore niche markets that your brand and products are interested in.
KPIs Questions:
Do people feel positive or negative feelings towards your brand?
Are there influencers or popular accounts that mention your brand? Who is their audience?
How popular is your brand and how often is it mentioned on social media?
What content is associated with your brand and how popular is it?
Select a Social Listening Tool
Although social listening tools vary depending on the industry you are in and your target audience, there are well-known tools you can use to conduct social listening in a smart way. Here are the best ones:
Sprinklr: One of the best powerful platforms suitable for large companies and provides comprehensive insights powered by artificial intelligence and comprehensive coverage of data and analysis across channels.
Meltwater: One of the platforms known for its ease of use, comprehensive data sources and ability to analyze social media, so it is suitable for all companies looking for a comprehensive solution.
Brandwatch: This platform delves into its analytics to understand customer sentiment and trends, so it is suitable for many marketing agencies and research-focused organizations.
Sprout Social: This platform is characterized by its ability to use social listening, publishing and sharing features. Therefore, it is a great option for small and medium-sized companies looking for a solution to manage their social media platforms.
Talkwalker: This platform is suitable for companies that care about their reputation and image with their customers. It provides comprehensive insights powered by artificial intelligence in addition to its focus on brand reputation management.
Brand24: This tool is a great option for small and medium-sized companies with a limited budget; with its affordable cost, this tool monitors in real time, analyzes sentiment and tracks influencers.
Google Alerts: This basic, free tool from Google tracks keywords on the web or keyword mentions.
Hootsuite: This platform offers a limited free plan with basic social listening features.
Monitor your brand reputation and customer sentiment
When you focus on feedback with social listening, you will analyze your customers’ sentiments through their reviews and comments. Then you will know the reputation of your brand and identify potential problems in advance and improve them to increase customer satisfaction, as follows:
Collect real customer feedback to know what can be developed and improved.
Learn creative strategies to leverage feedback.
Gather information to get actionable data.
Strengthen customer relationships.
Identify trends and opportunities
Social listening enables you to gain insight into the opinions and behaviors of your target audience. You can also discover opportunities by analyzing trending topics in comments, to design your products, services and campaigns. In addition, you can connect with influencers to generate revenue that increases awareness of your brand.
Improve customer experience continuously
To improve customer experience, always be aware of social media comments about the brand experience, and accept them whether they are positive or negative; because they will be a reason for understanding your customers and what satisfies them. Improving your customers' experience and resolving problems quickly and directly contributes to enhancing their experience significantly.
Support critical operational decisions
Information from social listening helps you make operational decisions quickly and instantly, detect changes in customer needs and preferences to better direct resources and prioritize initiatives. It also helps evaluate and adjust new products, advertising campaigns or appropriate partnerships; it is valuable feedback from customers to keep you informed about competitors.
Effectively implementing your social listening strategy will enable you to deliver customer service that sets you apart in the market and aligns with consumers’ expectations and needs.
Why is social listening important for companies?
Technological development has prompted companies to take advantage of modern technological developments and learn how to benefit from them in a way that serves the interests of companies, especially in social listening. Companies that have used this feature have become highly capable of obtaining valuable, reliable and useful qualitative data. Social listening has contributed to understanding their customers' points of view more deeply and realistically. To be able to understand your customers' future requirements and needs, we recommend the following:
Analyzing Comments for Actionable Insights:
Companies are taking advantage of the advancement of AI to analyze unstructured comment data and extract meaningful patterns and future goals. Through specialized social listening tools, companies have been able to identify prominent themes and sentiments in customer comments on social media; as these comments can greatly influence business decisions, by providing a deeper and more accurate understanding of customer needs and pain points in their experience.
In short, companies have leveraged customer feedback more effectively, using advanced data analysis techniques to make informed decisions and enhance the customer experience.
Improve Weaknesses and Customer Experience:
From the feedback, identify what needs to be improved in the customer experience. If many customers express the same issues or criticisms in the feedback, this provides a valuable opportunity for the company to address these weaknesses directly. Social listening also helps identify employees who provide exceptional customer experiences, which contributes to their recognition by the company to promote successful practices among its employees on a large scale across all departments of the company.
In short, companies leverage social listening data to gain valuable insights that meaningfully enhance the customer experience.
Integrating Social Listening into Customer Experience:
Integrating social listening into customer experience programs gives companies a significant competitive advantage. Gaining deeper consumer insights and the ability to deliver a superior customer experience will have a significant positive impact on a company’s business, helping companies achieve better business results and enhance long-term customer loyalty.
The field of social listening is expected to undergo significant advancements in the coming years, with a growing emphasis on multimedia analytics and the adoption of new technologies to generate valuable insights and enhance the customer experience. Companies will be able to foster deeper connections with their customers, create personalized offers, and deliver unique experiences, ultimately driving sustainable customer loyalty.
Effective ways to maintain and develop social listening:
Promote the importance and sustainability of social listening.
Integrate multimedia.
Rely on artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Personalization and real-time response.
In conclusion
By strategically leveraging social listening techniques, you can gain deeper insights into your customers and continuously enhance your offerings. These techniques enable you to establish an effective communication channel, allowing you to respond swiftly to their needs and craft personalized experiences that reflect your genuine commitment to them. This, in turn, strengthens their loyalty and deepens their connection with your brand.